#aitnl – Cat Owner Living Abroad

New Beginnings

One of my fondest memories from my first time in The Netherlands back in 2007 was a trip to Schiermonnikoog with my program. We stayed in an old farm house with lambs in the back yard, sleeping all together in one big room upstairs.

There are many moments in life that I don’t remember or appreciate. Sometimes individual memories can be different depending on the person remembering them. My sister read a post on this blog and is convinced I made up it up because she doesn’t remember the story at all.

But I actively wanted to make that Schiermonnikoog trip a memory. I felt so grateful, in wonder of this beautiful place: an island with green fields and sandy beaches and frolicking lambs. Having not traveled much beforehand, I knew I was lucky to be there.

This week, we’re on a similar trip with friends. After a year of hibernating and feeling fearful of others, we are at another Dutch farmhouse in the countryside, with big windows overlooking cloudy skies, close to sheep.

The area is typical of Holland – wet, green, and windmilled. Thirteen years later, I am still playing board games into the night with lukewarm enthusiasm. I am still grateful for the drafty rooms we are sharing with friends. And like before, I want to keep this memory. In a year of endless days that merge together and where time passes with a lack of special moments, I will try to remember the joy of watching my friend’s daughter read a book on the floor with my husband, and the look her son gives when he wakes up from a nap. Despite corona’s endless days, I can still make new memories worth keeping.

A Coffee Mug’s Life

Our mug collection is robust and varied, crammed and stacked on top of one another in two full kitchen cupboards. Each feels important, but when I am having a particularly sensitive day, I always pick the mug with a cow.

I have a confusing relationship with this mug. It makes me contemplate the life of an object in relationship to its owner.

Several years back, I had spent a few days picking out this mug in The Netherlands when I was visiting with my now-husband, then boyfriend, Mark. At the time, Mark and I were both living in the States, one of us in Boston and the other in NYC. As we had both come many times before to the Netherlands separately, this was the first time we came together, as a pair. Our debut.

For this important event, I wanted to pick out something special for my dad. All the weed paraphernalia felt too gimmicky; the tulip key chains too generic. With my dad being a compulsive (instant) coffee drinker all day long, a mug felt just right. I carefully selected one with a cow that spoke to me, projecting a level of absurdity I knew he would enjoy.

When I came back home and gifted him this mug, it immediately became his favorite. I’d find it propped up on his bedside table, by him watching TV, always half full of cold coffee he had forgotten to drink before making himself another cup, in a different mug, also somewhere forgotten in the house. Each time I’d come to see him, I’d look approvingly at this mug, remembering all the trips to The Netherlands I had made, and despite him never having visited himself, all the times I had thought about him there.

Now that absurd cow is looking back at me as I write this post, half full of cold tea. When my dad passed away a few years ago and I was packing up both his things and my own to prepare for my move, this was the one non-clothing item I decided to take with me.

But even though I purchased it here, it still feels strange to use. This mug has made the same journey my husband and I have done many times – from The Netherlands, to America, and back. This cow is back home, yet it had an entire life before this moment. Like me, it sat with my dad outside on the porch smoking cigarettes. Like me, it kept my dad company while he watched the Pats or read a book. Hopefully, we can give this cow even more memories, different than the ones before, but still with the same amount of love. To many more years with cow cups. Cheers.

Christmas Lights

As my husband and I ready ourselves for the holiday, I always feel a bit homesick on the off-years we are here instead of in The States. My family is one of gaudy decorations and raw, unadulterated American consumerism; we gorge lasagna and laugh and savagely unwrap until we are swimming in piles of ripped paper and elaborate bows. Here, things are quieter, a fancy Christmas dinner, a walk, some cathartic sighs, a glass of wine before bed.

Christmas lights in the Netherlands also seem more subdued and classier than their American counterparts; outdoor lights are less frequent and tastefully executed in white.

When I was young my dad would execute the opposite of taste. Once when we went on a holiday with my mom, we came back to what my dad imagined an amazing surprise: he had painted part of the bathroom in glossy primary colors – blue, yellow and red. With mirrors already elaborately hung and the project not finished, it reminded me of a clown house under construction. My mother was not pleased.

But he approached Christmas lights with a similar design aesthetic and level of enthusiasm. He’d go outside every year with a huge tangled ball of lights, ready to make miracles happen. He’d be out there, banging and swearing and working hard, trying to make our small single level home sparkle in the sky. This would go on for about an hour, until we’d hear a loud “f**ck” yelled into the wind, and know that the project had likely come to a close. It makes me smile now, his earnest efforts for holiday joy. Among our nice neighborhood of white picket fences, we were the family with a half strung string of lights dangling from the roof, unattended and looking lost, until my dad managed to get back up there and take it down a few months later.

My husband and I went for a walk yesterday, in the Dutch equivalent of my American suburban town – an affluent green municipality a 40 minute (bike) ride outside the city. When I walk here, it always feels comfortable and familiar, with fancy big homes and beautiful Christmas trees inside warmly lit living rooms. Walking further outside our normal residential radius, we discovered a new neighborhood, one full of houses with deflated santas and spare lawnmower parts in the front yard. Their bushes weren’t trimmed and the grass wasn’t cut. To me, these houses looked friendly, welcoming, chock-full of as much clutter and crap that could fit onto one small lawn. I looked at my husband and smiled, “feels like home.”

Pandemic Walks

Taking a walk outside during corona times seems like participating in a gauntlet you didn’t realize you had signed up for.

Today we did an otherwise nice walk in nature if you discount The Fast Walkers. “Fast Walkers” have recently been redefined for me, because in an overly enthusiastic at-home yoga sculpt class a few weeks back, I inadvertently crippled myself by injuring my knee. This gives me a hobble that slows my pace dramatically, allowing most people, young and old, sick and well, to overtake me on a walk.

The problem is: there is a subset of women, all surprisingly with the same haircut and sense of purpose, who walk fast even for normal standards. These women are defiant walkers. They will not yield to your desires; they will not step aside. They generally travel in packs.

These women plague me. As I limp frantically to keep distance, I hear them approaching, readying to pull ahead. I step into muddy ditches, holding my breath, waiting for them to pass. I feel like an old horse who’d like to retire amongst these spry refreshed show ponies, celebrating their Saturday prancing ritual.

I remind myself in these moments, as I must often do these days, to remain compassionate and kind. We are all just trying to enjoy the sun. Get some fresh air. Gallop in the breeze. Whether racing a marathon, or slowly shuffling to the finish line, we all make it to the same place. And in The Netherlands, that place is never too bad.